There's a good chance someone at the NFL office is going to get scapegoated for mishandling the Ray Rice video. But it's not going to change the consequences for Roger Goodell the league.
Someone pressed the panic button Wednesday night at NFL headquarters. A corporate commando in a gray flannel suit arrived the next day in the form of "independent investigator" and former FBI honcho Robert Mueller. He's on the scene to help The Shield ferret out whoever it was that screwed up the Ray Rice investigation ... with some helpful oversight from two of the league's billionaire owners.
The National Football League's bureaucratic immune response system is now fully engaged and closing in on a target.
TMZ released the video of Ray Rice attacking his fiancee (now wife) Janay Palmer on Monday morning. Everyone assumed the league had seen it, because it had already been reported that they had seen it, by Peter King on July 29. The NFL denied having seen it a few hours later. As definitive statements go, it left a little to be desired.
On Wednesday afternoon, the world got its first hint of a smoking gun when an anonymous law enforcement official let the Associated Press listen to a voicemail of a woman calling from a phone number associated with the NFL acknowledging both receiving and seeing the full video of the Feb. 15 assault.
And, yes, the idea that a female employee of the NFL could potentially take the fall for the NFL not seeing the video is an unfortunate footnote to this whole saga. The worst part about that is that the tape and who did or didn't see it doesn't really matter. But that's not going to stop the all-out pursuit of finding someone to at least try and sacrifice on The Shield's behalf.
The former G-Man was on the case right away. New York Giants co-owner John Mara and Steelers co-owner Art Rooney III, who are overseeing the investigation, directly addressed the potential tape-leaker in a statement:
We agreed that the scope of the investigation should be aimed at getting answers to specific questions, including what efforts were made by league staff to obtain the video of what took place inside the elevator and to determine whether, in fact, the video was ever delivered to someone at the league office, and if so, what happened to the video after it was delivered.
They'll find that person eventually (unless TMZ does it first), and that person will probably take the blame, giving the "we messed up" apologetic NFL an independent actor monkeywrenching the process.
NFL exec says AP report doesn't change what Goodell said but "if there's a delivery sitting under someone's desk there will be consequences"
— Norah O'Donnell (@NorahODonnell) September 10, 2014But it's not going to go away.
The arrest report from the night of the incident in Atlantic City states that Ray Rice "struck her with his hand, rendering her unconscious." Rice's lawyer talked openly about what was on the tape. ESPN's Chris Mortensen reported details about what happened inside the elevator in May. This week, the Ravens said that Rice did not lie to them about what was on the tape, while Goodell called Rice's testimony ambiguous. A report from ESPN's Outside the Lines on Thursday said that Rice was straight forward with Goodell about what happened.
They didn't need to see the tape to know what was on it when they suspended him for two games.
The league's bureaucratic immune system kicked into full gear in the wake of the report that someone at the NFL offices had seen it. Team owners closed ranks on Thursday, sending out a volley of statements standing by Goodell and talking up the investigation. One of league's owners spoke anonymously to the Wall Street Journal, explaining that the commissioner was afraid of provoking a backlash by being perceived as too harsh on Janay Rice in pursuit of answers.
Independent investigations are a big part of the response for entities on this scale, the antibiotic injection aimed at curing the infection once and for all. A name brand suit with a thread of public integrity gives the place an audit, finds a scapegoat or some mechanical flaw in the process to pin it on. Report gets issued. Policy change made. Agency promises to do better. We're politely asked to move on.
Something important to note about the independent investigator: he works for the WilmerHale law firm, the same outfit that helped the NFL hammer out a multi-billion contract with DirecTV. It's compromised from the beginning.
This time, it might not be enough to sacrifice an anonymous tape-watcher inside the NFL offices and produce a report promising changes to the system. Every blurb of legal talk from the league gets volleyed right back when someone aggrieved somehow in the process finds an eager reporter.
Those new reports are met with another round of statements from the NFL, the Ravens or other league proxies. More statements, more inconsistencies. By now, there are already so many holes in the story of how the Ravens and the NFL handled this, no "independent" or firing apparatchik can the fill in the gaps or calm the public backlash.
The NFL sealed its fate back in July, when they gave the regime's official stenographer a version of the story portraying itself as a stern, but ultimately understanding disciplinarian, accounting for the concerns of a domestic violence victim pleading on her attacker's behalf ... while she sat next to him in a room full of male leaders from the league and the Ravens, a team with a vested interest in keeping their star player on the field.
Now, we're mostly playing a guessing game about whether or not commissioner will be fired. He will, part of the same immune response that will scapegoat the woman for getting caught on a voicemail recording compromising the league's plausible deniability. Goodell's job is get canned, as Spencer Hall explained on Thursday, albeit it through a prolonged process with the kind of golden parachute you'd expect for a CEO who helped won the 2011 CBA battle, negotiated stadium deals with taxpayers on behalf of owners, and pushed league revenues and franchise valuations closer to the stratosphere.
Bureaucratic immune response won't cure the disease that plagues the modern NFL. It can't. Like the investment banks run amuck in the financial crisis six years ago, the NFL has become too big to fail, an insular organization with no external checks and balances (save for the occasional saber rattling from Congress) on its behavior.
The damage is done for the NFL. No scapegoating or independent investigations are going to take away the level of public distrust the league's created.